Since James Watt's improvements in steam generation in the Industrial Age and particularly with the employment of fossil fuels over the past century, mankind has been dramatically increasing the consumption of energy, and as a consequence changing the environment. With the rise of China and other nations with large populations, all desirous of attaining higher standards of living, dependent upon fossil fuel consumption, the ecological damaging effects to the Earth are accelerating and the environment is under siege. Solutions are sought to remedy and alleviate these consequences. Although non-fossil fuel alternatives are available, economic considerations thwart immediate large scale exploitation of cleaner energy generation sources.
The push for non-fossil fuel alternatives continues, with developments along a variety of fronts, e.g., solar and wind power generation. With the advent of microprocessors and computers, along with new and stronger materials, however, other mechanisms are increasingly possible to shift from fossil fuels to renewable and cleaner forms of energy, such as by improving tried and true technologies, e.g., steam and pneumatic energies. For example, developments in metallurgy and components engineering have produced materials of great strength, enabling better control of steam, pneumatic or compressed air and other energy sources. Newer technologies are possible also, such as the control of hydrogen gas as an energy source. These three sources are deemed clean to the environment and improvements in their usage are a main thrust of the instant invention.
Indeed, clean energy has become a driving force for economic recovery in the United States (and elsewhere) and is being adopted as the energy type to overcome current use levels of fossil fuels. Steam power, the basis for the Industrial Revolution thanks to Watt, remains the principal means for generating electricity, e.g., through larger steam turbines and in long-haul ocean shipping. The sharp decline in usage of steam power over the past seventy-five years was due in part to the lack of advanced technologies to make steam economical and keep abreast of increased environmental standards. With improved new materials and other advancements in computer technologies to efficiently manage engine operation and performance, a new revolution is at hand and the present invention is at the forefront of these developments.
With clean energy investment rising and price projections on the technologies decreasing, engines and systems capable of taking better advantage of clean technologies will become quite valuable. The instant invention is directed to improvement of the carbon footprint, by minimizing or eliminating fossil fuel usage, and making devices that are environmentally clean with zero pollutants emitted during operations.
The instant invention also addresses reducing costs of operation through employment of closed-loop energy systems with monitoring of heat, flow and load, and feedback to guarantee and sustain efficient operation over long intervals and in a variety of applications.
The instant invention permits the employment of diverse clean energy sources together or individually, and provides for recovering and recycling any residual or unused energies deployed.
To fully exploit the advantages in developing clean technologies, the equipment and constituent device parts should be modular in design, with parts commonality permitting ease of assembly and disassembly, thereby achieving additional gains, and enable clean technologies to compete with fossil fuels.